So my little self-absorbed blog is all about me. This is a complete exercise in me expressing my stuff for my own personal benefit according to my own whim. If I “disclose” something it’s because that is what I choose to do. I don’t feel obligated to anyone else.
With that said, I’m going to disclose something that will offend some of the partakers of this blog. I’m not apologizing. I’m simply disclosing. And even with the life experience and empathy I have now, I’m not sure I would have done things differently.
At the King’s Daughters’ School we had a significant portion of our students who were in state custody. Many of those students had one or both parents in prison. At times, those parents were in prison for crimes they had committed against the children who were now under my care. From time to time I would have to write summaries, reports, make recommendations, or facilitate communication in regards to the possible reunification of the incarcerated parent the student under my care. Let me tell you, I never made it easy and I never recommended reunification.
I had an inherent opposition to parents who had neglected, abused, or otherwise put their children into the situations they were in. Why would I want to facilitate a reunification back with the very people who were the root of all the behavior I had worked so hard to eradicate in the lives of those kids? There was so much frustration/futility in what I was doing. It was very easy to look at what the kids were doing and channel that anger towards them. I couldn’t make it being angry at those kids. I knew I had to love them as if they were my own children. So I adopted this outlook: I was at war with their pasts. Whenever there was a kid kicking or spitting or flinging their bloody snot at me I would envision their past as an actual person, my opponent, my enemy who I was engaged in an actual battle. I focused my energy at that enemy and looked upon the kid as someone I had to rescue from their past. I was very smug and very convinced I was in the right.
Not to get to graphic, but let me give you a taste:
There was a student who I was close to whose father had lent or rented him out for sex to his friends. I had regular dealings with that father. I think he came to see me as his friend, but all I ever wanted to do was bash his perverted grinning teeth back down his throat every time I saw him.
I had a mother and a father (who were both in and out of jail and prison intermittently) come to a team meeting for their daughter. When we listed the Depo-Provera shot (for birth control) as one of her medications the hydro-cephalic father stood up, pointed and glared at me with the one eye he could control like it was my fault that his 12-year-old daughter was on birth-control. I was seriously considering coming over the table and running his head into the concrete wall while I explained to him that if he hadn’t been having sex with his daughter since she was a toddler maybe she wouldn’t drop her pants for anyone who asked her anywhere. I think I may have had a “look” because the mother but her hand on her husband’s forearm to set him down while one of our administrators gently put her hand on my shoulder and took over the rest of the meeting.
All that to say, the thought of working in a prison was the farthest thing from my mind and heart.
But then I remembered a “challenge” I threw down to the Lord. I specifically said to Him, “I will never do treatment again, unless You are the treatment.”
Little did I know that He was going to “honor” my arrogant request.
chris
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